Generally among the cooling systems of a refrigerator, the natural convection system has the evaporators separately in each of a cold storage compartment and a freezer compartment so that the cooling is accomplished by the natural convection. It has the advantages that the cooling efficiency of a freezer compartment is large and the energy can be saved. It also has the disadvantages that the cooling distribution of the cold storage compartment becomes uneven and frost is generated frequently. A forced circulation system circulates the chilled air through the evaporator with the fans into the freezer compartment and cold storage compartment. It has the advantages that the automatic control is easy and the cooling distribution is even, but has disadvantages in that the cooling efficiency is much lower and noise is generated. Therefore in a refrigerator, it is most desirable to cool the freezer compartment with the natural convection system and the cold storage compartment with the forced circulation system.
The usual refrigerator locates a freezer compartment on the upper position and a cold storage compartment at the lower position. With this arrangement, it is very difficult to cool the freezer compartment with natural covection and the cold storage compartment with forced circulation.
These problems as described in above can be solved simply by locating the freezer compartment beneath the cold storage compartment. However, if the freezer compartment is located beneath the cold storage compartment, it is inconvenient to use the door handle because the opening and closing direction of the door of the freezer compartment is in the direction of right and left. Thus, a user's hand can not reach into a freezer compartment easily since the ice making portion of a freezer compartment is normally located at the corner of the freezer compartment.
Meanwhile, devices for automatic ice making have been suggested more recently in order to provide ice making facilities in the refrigerator.
A typical automatic ice making device has a heater in the bottom of the container, and a rotatable driving-out mechanism is provided atop the automatic ice making device. When the water which is supplied through water service pipe is to be frozen, the heater melts the ice forming a contacting surface between the container and the ice, they are separated from each other, and subsequently the driving-out mechanism rotates and drives the ice out of the container, so that the ice is dropped into an another container where it is stored.
With this type of ice making device, even though the freezer compartment is located at a lower position from the cold storage compartment, it is easier to handle ice making.